His shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. “Of course not. But I am not—” He stopped, his hard gaze holding her across the short space that separated them.
“What? Not important enough to betray? You’re high strata. In line for that council thing.”
“Bana.”
Ashe shrugged. “Maybe she’s worried.”
“Of what could she worry?”
“Maybe she is afraid you’ll try to be a hero. Save the alien girl.” Did her eyes ask the question they shouldn’t? She wasn’t sure. Her emotions switched so fast around him. One minute she was cool as ice, the next totally girl-with-a-guy lame. The sad part? She didn’t know what she wanted or needed him to do, other than not let people cut her open, of course. She’d missed some key, maturation events by entering the Time Service so young. She knew the facts of life, but didn’t have a clue what to do with them. Boys bored her. No question she’d seen some truly fine men traveling through time, but they’d passed through her life too fast for her to ping on anyone. Until this one. Him she had to notice. This was the first man who didn’t bore her. Were these feelings her just wanting what she couldn’t have? How did she know? She didn’t need a hero, of course, because she was here to fix his time line, and rescue her own self, but it would be nice if he wanted to be a hero. For his sake. It was good to want to be a hero. Meant you weren’t the bad guy. Cause you’re the hero.
He will let you down.
Shan paced around the table that separated them, trapping her in the corner of the tent. He stopped when she had to look up to maintain gaze lock. His brooding gaze, the sulky droop to his mouth should not have made her blood heat like that crazy flame Bana used to make her amazing stew. The whole looming over her thing usually didn’t work for her, but when he did it, it was kind of cute.
He has had much practice at it.
Ashe got that it raised bad memories for him, but what she didn’t get was why it felt familiar to her—and not in a bad way. If this was about not-so-great grandma, shouldn’t she feel annoyed? If only on a genetic level? Instead she felt…not annoyed. Might have felt more but not ready to admit it to herself or anyone else.
His head tipped to one side, the frown between his brows deepening. Ashe studied it, trying to decide if it worried her or not, decided not. It didn’t look or a feel like an “I want you gone” frown. More like a “what are you” look, but with an edge to it that felt better than her usual experience with the “what are you.”
Feeling surged like a mini tsunami. She felt each molecule of the damp, still air. The silence broken only by his breathing and hers. Could you feel silence? Cause she felt it. The slow speed up of her heart. Tension swirling. Lovely tension. It eddied around them, and between them, filling all the spaces with a building heat. Felt nice despite the slide into out of control. Her eyes widened. Dried. Mouth, too. Breathing slowed. Felt each inhale. Felt each exhale. The rise, the fall of her chest. Of his. Very nice chest, by the way.
In near slow motion, he reached out, one finger landing on the tip of her chin and nudging it up. Following instincts as old as time, Ashe angled her head, just enough to accommodate a faster intersection of his mouth with hers. Guess he knew more than she realized. Or he had instincts, too. He paused, close enough for their breaths to mingle as he stared at her staring at him. Had her pupils dilated, too? Felt like they did. His had turned into deep, dark pools of need. Her pulse sped up more. Felt his ramp up as if they were touching everywhere instead of just his finger to her chin. His man scent surrounded her like a warm blanket, stopping her breath and maybe time.
He breathed in, slow, but deep, as if he hoped to clear his head. Didn’t look like it worked. His glazed gaze shifted lower. To her mouth? No proof, but her lips seemed to swell and soften, as if they were sure. When he gave in, finally closed that last gap that fit their mouths together, she sighed. Pretty sure he did, too. Her thoughts scrambled a bit because there was so much sensation all at once. Kind of like being back in the vortex, but without the painful parts. Amazing when the only place they touched was guy mouth to girl mouth. The languorous heat swelled from the inside, but it wasn’t like the weather heat. It was lovely, kind of sweet and a lot sassy. Lots of inner sway and swirl. It tried to pull her lashes down, but her eyes liked looking at him looking at her. They did sag around the edges, putting a halo around him. She’d have smiled if her mouth hadn’t been busy doing other things. Lovely things.
Someone somewhere had told her first kisses tended to suck. Someone somewhere had been so wrong. Didn’t seem to matter that neither of them knew quite what to do. It just felt, well, lovely. Right. Beyond that was a sense of relief that it had happened, as if she’d been waiting for it and now it was finally here. That relief softened her lips, causing his to grow more insistent, more firm. It was still only point of contact between them—though it felt as if all of her was welded to all of him. There was music in there, too, a love song that she recognized, but didn’t. She kind of knew that Lurch tried to distance himself from the moment.
Then it changed. His mouth, her response. Something rippled through them both—Ashe felt it in all the places they weren’t touching and where they were. Knowledge shimmered just out of reach, then it wasn’t out of reach. It was there. It passed through them in a rush, became part of them both. The horizon around his head shimmered, too.
It didn’t surprise her things between them changed again. He deepened the kiss with a new confidence. Now his hands found her waist, pulled her against his lean, hard length. As his confidence deepened, the horizon steadied, though in a new way, and still a bit out of focus. Something had changed outside them, too. The tent. The tent was gone. Room. Some kind of room. Like a house maybe. Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but him.
Her lashes wanted to go down as everything sped up like a time launch. Reminded her of being sucked into the crevasse—the horizon quivered again, shivering through her with the kiss. And for several heady seconds everything around them went sharp and clear. A lamp hung from a ceiling. Pretty, but not suited to a tent. Hard to parse the details. Cause his mouth, his gaze, his hands pulled her into a better, much more interesting place…
He stiffened and she felt the struggle in him to stay in the kiss, to stay in the fractured moment. His sigh came just ahead of hers. He lifted his head. The horizon lost duality, sharpening to the other, to the room, then it was gone and they were back in the tent with the automaton parts.
What just happened?
Ashe blinked. It did not help.
I am not sure.
Could it be my time senses trying to return?
Only it hadn’t felt like her time senses. It had felt like, and not at all like, travel through time.
“What was that?” The question and the look that went with it were wary.
Ashe was pretty sure he didn’t mean the kiss. But not completely sure. She arched her brows.
“Where did we go? How did we go? How did we return?”
He saw it, too.
Lurch sounded intrigued.
“I’m not,” she licked her lips, saw his lashes flicker and felt her heart kick a bit, too, at the taste of him lingering there, “sure.” She couldn’t describe it, but she knew it, though she didn’t
know
it. The confidence from that place lingered in this one, inside them, and he felt it too, if the way he still held her against his chest was any indication. She felt the change in him, the assurance and the new knowledge of hugging, of kissing, of girl/guy interactions. “Did any of it look familiar to you?” She’d never seen that lamp before—or had she? It was just a lamp…
He shook his head, but not with a lot of certainty. “It did not.” He sighed, his chest expanding against her in a way that was not unpleasant. “And yet…” His frown made a come back, but not in a bad way.
“Yeah.”
His gaze pinged on her. “You feel it, too?”
Would have been nice to know which “it” he thought they shared. Since she didn’t, she just nodded.
One hand lifted, a gentle finger pushing back the strands of her hair straying across her forehead, sliding down the side around the jaw, then up across her mouth. The touch was slight, but the impact—not so much. What intrigued her was the difference in that touch. He’d initially approached her like someone who did not know much. Based on what she’d learned about his people, she did not know how he could know much of anything about girls except that they existed, but in that moment of duality, that had changed. His touch had changed. He knew more. His kissing had gone from novice to expert and she’d had no trouble staying with him, though how she’d changed was less than how he’d changed, blurred or confused by that other meeting with the other him, perhaps. That was different from this, as night was different from day. Hard to explain how, except that she felt it to her core. The one thing she knew with certainty: in that place, in that room, they
knew
each other. She knew his touch, his embrace, the feel of his mouth on hers.
And he knew her.
He tried to regain balance, but his gaze flared with the same longing, a longing now boosted by the time shift experience, that eroded his effort. She might have helped tip him toward off balance by parting her lips. The music started up again—
Lurch.
Though she didn’t mind that much. A great love scene needed the right musical score. His head started to dip again—relief spiking with the desire still swirling inside her—when a small sound outside jerked them both back a few steps. The distance did nothing to dispel the tension filling the air. The flap pulled back and Calendria peered in. Why did Ashe sense this was Bana’s work? When Shan didn’t wave her off, she stepped inside.
“Well?” she asked, her gaze bouncing off Shan, settling on Ashe. If she sensed what she’d interrupted, it did not show in her face.
“It’s junk. You should throw it back.” Ashe’s voice came out more husky than usual. She wished she had time to think about what just happened, though mostly she wanted to dwell on her first kiss—even though it had morphed into a not-first kiss—which made the need to dwell more crucial.
“But—” Calendria stopped. “Eamon says he’s tracking another falling. A bigger one than any so far.”
“Do they all come in from the same direction?” Ashe asked. Calendria waited for a nod from Shan before nodding, too. “That’s good. Be unsafe for a ship to be in that sector—” Shan’s twitch stopped the words.
Disappearances.
“You lost a ship to one of these things. That’s why you’re here.”
He spun to face her. “Where is it?”
“I’m not even sure where I am.” It could be anywhere. It could be any when. It could be crushed to pieces like the automatons. At least his presence made more sense now, but he still looked wrong for this place. For this time? The flash of that other time seemed to indicate a hearty yes to that question, but had they seen how it was supposed to be or caught a glimpse into a broken reality that was not meant to be? He’d been so large, so commanding in the other time line with no-so-great grandma. There he’d been a bit player, but he hadn’t seemed to know it, striding around like he was the star and pinging on not-so-great grandma like a heat seeking missile of ancient legend. At the time, she’d thought he was all he could be, but this time, he seemed bigger than that, only still wearing a tight fitting life. One that tried to contain him? Or one that wasn’t his? And the time with the kissing? She’d like to say she noticed how he was in that one, but all she’d noticed was the kissing.
Which time was right for him? And how could she tell when her heart yearned for that place where he’d known her?
He does seem an ill fit for this time.
Lurch conceded this with extreme reluctance as Shan turned and strode out, pulling Calendria with him.
Ashe hesitated, but then shrugged and followed. He could stop her if he didn’t want her along. He might have been heading for the tent with the tracking, but before they got there, the incoming arrived, hitting the ground hard enough to almost tumble Calendria to the ground. Ashe rode it pretty easily, but then she’d been schooled by the time tsunami. If it had been a normal meteorite impact, it would have been bad for them. Fry them to the ground, maybe even extinction bad. It was close enough she saw the flash and then a crater appeared just outside the perimeter of the camp. The impact tremors had not all subsided when Shan switched directions, striding out of the shielding. No one stopped her from following him. He halted at the edge, so she did, too. And once again got a jolt.
“What is it?”
“It’s a piece of a,” Ashe had to swallow and take a run at it before she could get it out, “transmogrification machine.” She eased out a sigh of relief at managing the word. That was one tough word—but only a large piece of the machine itself, almost all of the port side, she estimated, recalling her last sight of it. She had not seen the interior of it then or later, though not-so-great grandma had briefed her about it. She was pretty sure it had looked better all together, though not much could make it look less odd. It appeared to have been twisted before being ripped apart. No heat came from the impact crater, which also showed signs of intense heat, more than her crater had. It didn’t bode well for Shan’s missing ship.
Lurch felt fascinated.
Time waves are carrying the debris here.
Could we use one of them as a ride out of here?
Dangerous.
I ride waves all the time.
Or she had.
These look more like vortexes.
The edges of the crater did have that vortex type swirl.
But we survived.
Barely. And probably only because of your uniform.
Which had been fried by the vortex. Had Time hosed her or was it just a happy bi-product? Cause Time was a cranky bitch.
“What is a—”
He stopped, probably realizing how hard transmogrification was to say and keep your dignity. That’s why she took it in a rush. Hesitation was fatal, okay not fatal but definitely embarrassing.